The idea is light

The proposal is to paint well known pictures.

It can be famous paintings, brand marks, logos, personalities, signs...all the images and symbols seen in today's visual culture.This task is endless: there is an infinity of images. The choice of pictures is automatically related to the artist's environment.

The support is heavy

Symbolizing duration, the support is rock. It's picked from the streets of Paris. Ancient pavement stones, cobblestones. Each single rock serves as canvas for a particular representation.

"Le pave" in french also means "the street" and it's toughness. It represents the organised public area in which all the social actors meet in reasonable order, or the chaos when they are used as weapons and barricades in the diffenrent revolts.

Only cobblestones that have really been used as such in the streets of Paris are utilized. They are loaded with history.

Generally granite, but also sandstone or porphyry. Often ligth grey with black spots, there is a huge variety of colors from pure white through light yellow, ochre, light blue, light pink, red, brown, dark green, to black. These colors are most visible on rainy days and on the sawed stones. It is a long lasting material, but also intensely vibrating, offering a very rich background.( --> sawed stones in the rain ).....( --> Granite - Wikipedia )

In Paris there is mainly 3 kinds of cobblestones:

the "Mosaïque" or "10x10" is the small one, an irregular cube of about 10cm side ( 4 inches ), it can be found in Montmartre and many little streets in Paris(--> Mosaique layed in fan pattern)

the "Echantillon" rectangular around 20cm x 15cm X 15cm ( 8in x 6in x 6in), is very often hidden under the asphalt everywhere in Paris.

the "Napoleon", the big one, irregular cube of around 20cm side ( 8in ), very rare, in front on "Notre Dame" or "St Germain des Pres" church.

Since 20 years they exist in the sawed version, with one or more plane surfaces.

The paint is gouache ( or tempera ), with several layers of oil varnish.

Installation in progress

Search engine placement

Like others the goal of this website is to be found in search engines in general. When the pave series started out, the point was not to show them on the internet. Then the first website was made by Serge Roze des Ordons and it appeared that the paintings representing popular images also were demanded subjects in searches. It became more and more part of the work, and now there is much more people who see pictures of the paintings than people who will actually see them for real. Most of the time the images for chosen subjects are found on Google, now their representation on pave are back on Google. ( -> See list of placement in Google )

Goal

Make people question their own mythology of images and those related to different cultures.

Make people question about the pertinency and permanency of these symbols reproduced over and over, in relation with very various fields (ex.:advertising)

Offer a joyfull path, a rock painted history, testimony of today's consumption of imagery and growing interest in cultural matter, ready made fossiles for future anthopologists.